Today's fast-paced global business environment often requires that widely distributed groups of people have immediate access to information and resources. Increasingly, this access has been provided by interconnecting computers and other devices (e.g., printers, modems, storage devices, and the like) to form computer networks so that information and resources can be more quickly shared among the network users. Computer networks can generally be broken down into two broad categories: local area networks, or LANs, which typically cover short distances, such as within a building, and wide area networks, or WANs, which cover extended distances, such as between cities or countries. LANs and WANs can be interconnected using devices such as bridges, routers, and gateways.
With computer networks, people who are separated by a great distance can share information and resources. However, the data transfer rate across wide area links is often intermittent and slow. For example, local area networks can transfer data at speeds up to 100 megabits per second while some wide area networks operate at a slow 56 kilobits per second.
In addition to slow transfer rates once a network connection is established, network latency can also affect the effective time required to transfer data across a computer network. More particularly, network latency refers to delays in data transfer caused by implementation of the network transfer protocols. For example, algorithms are typically executed which encapsulate the data to be transferred in one or more packets prior to transfer across the network link. To help alleviate the time delays associated with the latency and data transfer rate problems, computer files (e.g., system files, utility files, application files, etc.) are often replicated or copied to the LANs or local computers on which they will be used. In this manner, shared resources are placed closest to the user who can access the information at LAN speeds, rather than having a central repository (such as on a single computer server) which must be accessed at slow WAN speeds.
Although the above-described arrangement can provide increased speed for network users, as well as system robustness, file correspondency on the computer network must now be addressed by network administrators. A practical example of the necessity of maintaining file correspondency occurs when a computer application, such as a word processing program, is updated and the new version is to be installed on the computer network. Because word processing applications are most often installed on computers close to the end user, multiple copies of the older version of the word processing application can be distributed across the computer network and require updating. Presently, a network administrator faced with the problem of generating file correspondency across the computer network with respect to the new application can either manually copy or replicate all the application files to the designated computers across the network or write a batch file to execute the same. However, these processes are inefficient and can tax costly network resources because any large files of the new application are being transferred across slow WAN links, thereby tying up these links which may be needed for more critical data transfers. In order to alleviate these and other similar shortcomings regarding file correspondency processes, there is a desire to provide improved apparatuses and methods which can generate file correspondency between computers by locating and using a file on a target computer which matches the file on the source computer for which correspondency is desired, regardless of the name under which the matching file is stored or its location (e.g., directory, volume etc). Once a matching file is located on the target computer, file correspondency can be more quickly generated between the computers by such a process by using the matching file on the target computer. This would reduce the amount of data transferred across the computer network, thereby reducing the negative impacts which latency and slow data transfer rates can have on a file correspondency process.